right,” Lonna agreed. “Though I’m skeptical about most of the stories. The last one I heard was a year or so ago when rumors said Quinn got a local girl pregnant and then paid her to leave town.”
Victoria recoiled inwardly. “Was it true?”
“I doubt it.”
“I don’t believe a word of it.” Nikki firmly echoed Lonna. “Cully and Quinn have always refused to deny rumors. They hate gossip. But if either of them knew that they’d fathered a child, they would have insisted on marrying the woman and raising the baby.”
“The only part of the story that’s confirmed is that Angie Patterson left town. The rest is pure speculation,” Lonna added. “Personally, I think Quinn is a far better man than either he or his stepmother think he is. He and Cully grew up knowing they were illegitimate and so did everyone else in Colson. That set them apart. It’s tough to be different in a town as small as Colson. Of course,” she added with a twinkle, “it didn’t help their reputations that they were both pretty wild when they were teenagers.”
“That’s true,” Nikki agreed. “My favorite story is the one about Cully climbing the water tower and spraypainting it with red, white and blue stripes on the Fourth of July.”
Victoria had a quick mental image of the town’s medium-size water tower. “The whole thing?”
“Almost. The mayor caught him before he finished. But the mayor was afraid of heights and wouldn’t climb the ladder, so Cully ignored him and just kept painting until the sheriff arrived and went up to get him. I think he was about twelve at the time, and his dad had to bail him out of jail.”
Lonna laughed. “I’ll never forget the time they drove a herd of cattle through the middle of town. The merchants were furious, but Quinn told them his dad told him to move old man Johnson’s cattle from his pasture outside town to the rodeo grounds on the other side of Colson. The shortest route was down Main Street. Since it was the merchants who’d asked Johnson to move the cattle, they couldn’t convince the sheriff to charge Quinn and Cully with anything.
“And then there was the time Quinn broke his arm at the rodeo in the afternoon and that night, he rode again and won the bronc-riding competition.”
“With a broken arm?” Victoria asked in disbelief.
“Yes—I suspect he’d numbed the pain with whiskey, but nonetheless, it must have hurt.”
“No wonder the Bowdries have reputations for being wild,” Victoria commented dryly. “They are wild.”
“No question that they certainly were when they were teenagers,” Lonna agreed. “They dated the girls with the worst reputations and were the first boys questioned when anything crazy happened. But after their mid-twenties, they settled down.”
“That’s true,” Nikki confirmed. “But they’re still considered dangerous. Any woman who goes out with one of them is automatically on the top of everyone’s gossip list.” She shifted her red hair back over her shoulder, tucking it behind her ear with an absentminded gesture. “In spite of the rumors and gossip, though, the Bowdrie brothers are still the most eligible bachelors in the county—and the least likely to wed.”
“I don’t imagine that’s surprising, given their background.” Victoria frowned at the bottle of beer Lonna handed her. Her own life as a well-loved daughter had been quiet and safe. She’d been an intense, focused child who’d known from the time she was eight years old that she would become an attorney. Boys and dating hadn’t been an important issue, and she’d never known anyone quite like Quinn Bowdrie. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from Quinn, but to have him reject her before she had a chance to decide, and for reasons that had nothing to do with her personally, was frustrating. “So much for cowboys—I should have known better,” she raised the bottle, swallowed with an unladylike gulp and choked. “Yuk! What is this stuff?”
Lonna laughed, her eyes twinkling at the look of disgust on Victoria’s face. “Beer—would you rather have wine?”
“No,” Victoria said with grim resolve. “I’m stuck in Montana for the next year—I’ll learn to drink beer. Straight from the bottle.” She closed her eyes, took another sip, and shuddered.
“I think it may take awhile.” Nikki said dryly.
Lonna nodded. “I think you’re right.”
Chapter Two
O ver the next two weeks, Victoria threw herself into a frenzy of activity transforming the apartment she had rented in the old Victorian house next door to Nikki’s home into a welcoming nest. In the end, she was well satisfied with her home.
The activity focused her, gave her a purpose to fill her days and kept her too busy to fret over her problems. Her life as a child, teen and a young adult had been goal-oriented. She’d known from the day her uncle John had taken her and Lonna to the courthouse to watch his friend Hank Foslund plead a case that she would be a lawyer when she grew up. During her childhood, Victoria’s father had driven his family from Seattle to his brother’s home in Colson to spend their three-week summer vacation. She and Lonna were as close as sisters, and Victoria’s parents often gave in to the girls’ pleas to allow Victoria to spend an extra month with her cousin after they returned to Seattle. Many warm evenings had found the cousins challenging the widowed attorney to checker marathons on the screened porch. Those long summer evenings had cemented their friendship and her own resolve to practice law.
Now her health and her doctor’s edict had taken away her career. Granted, it was a temporary situation, but still she felt cut adrift, anchorless and without purpose.
Victoria didn’t like it, and she was determined to get her life back on track. The hiatus from her work was frustrating. So she threw herself into working on the apartment, clerking at her uncle John’s pharmacy and filling in for Hank. Business at the law office was slow, for all of his clients knew that Hank had left on a much-needed vacation. Fortunately for Victoria, however, Hank’s files were a disaster. She discovered that there was apparently no rhyme nor reason to his filing system, in fact, she couldn’t decipher any system at all. Satisfied that here was a project that would test even her fierce need for involvement, she dived into the years of files and documents that filled the cabinets in Hank’s office.
Busy though she was, however, she found thoughts of Quinn Bowdrie intruding all too often. Irritated to find herself remembering the handsome rancher and the kiss they’d shared, she determinedly pushed the memory aside. Still, she found she couldn’t banish him from her dreams.
Just after lunch one afternoon, Victoria bent from the waist and ran a feather duster over a bottom shelf in the cosmetics section. Dennings Pharmacy was enjoying a pleasant lull after a busy morning. The early afternoon sun poured through the plate-glass windows at the front of the store, glittering off the decorative glassware, bottles, and colored jars displayed in the deep window embrasures. Victoria had already dusted and efficiently reorganized the display before moving on to the aisle counters.
Humming along with the country music playing softly on the radio, she brushed the feather duster over a jewel-toned collection of bottles filled with nail polish. The store was quiet except for the low murmur of voices as a customer chatted with her uncle John at the pharmacy counter in the back of the store.
The jingle of bells that hung on the front door interrupted the soft music and Victoria stood, glancing across the store at the entrance. The
